A/N: Well, ladies and gentlemen, here starts the story. The right way this time, and not like that other piece of crap (Language, William!) in my story list, from a year ago. Just a few notes before we start off. First and foremost: Shrrg, who I have much to thank for in terms of plot-development and making sure I don't get too crazy, beta'd this chapter on her own before we worked out the system we use now: sharing the chapter on Google Docs, and arguing with each other until she likes how it flows, but it's written in my style. (So if my voice comes through a little heavily in this first chapter, please excuse Spiffy here. That's totally my bad, and I will be silent as a lamb for the rest of the story. You won't even know I'm here.)
She's also watching me type this, right now. (I'm in italics. Google Docs is fun!)
Yes, she's in italics, Google Docs is fun, and this is most definitely my story! However, huge thank-you for her for helping me out with this over the past... oh, god, year and some change-and for letting me borrow her Hunters! Well, borrow and make them better, but don't let her know I said that. (Um, Will? Google Docs. Busted. My Hunters are the best and you know it.)
I know they're the best, but they're even better with Marcus and-... wait, spoilers. They can read that on their own, later. (Yessir.)
Right. So now that you've gotten to see what the many hours of us talking on AIM have been like, on to the story- wait. Before you go, one final thing. Any similarities between this and Broken Bow weren't done with intent to copy Xed. He got here first, I admit it, but damn if the guy doesn't have some good ideas that deserve regular use! (Easy there, Will. It's not like we're copying the plot, it's not even similar! For one thing, this is an AU of Titan's Curse, with no children of Artemis. For those of you who don't like AUs-give it a chance. I usually don't either, but this one's seriously good. I wouldn't be here otherwise. And Xed said we could use the chart o' gods, which is the only thing we took from BB.)
Yeah, well... shut up! In this day and age-
(Hijacked by the beta. Read the story. Have fun.)
_
It had been almost two weeks since we'd gotten the new guy in homeroom.
Sylvus Hawthorne was his name; he was about my height, six feet or so, and remarkably average, though a bit antisocial. He looked at everyone in the halls like he was daring them to try to eat him or something. I almost felt sorry for the guy; he wore braces on his legs and walked with a limp, and I suspected the reason he was so jumpy, so clearly willing to fight, was because he was used to being picked on and he was sick of it. He certainly didn't make much of an effort to make friends. The only person I ever really saw him talk to was an Asian girl in my History class named Amanda. Amanda, hell if I know her last name, was just about as average as her newfound tail except for the fact that she didn't smell like freshly cut grass from a foot away.
"Pat. You're daydreaming again," an irked voice informed me.
Now, I could tell you with reasonable certainty that Amanda didn't smell like I just mowed my lawn, because I was sitting across a desk from her. It dawned on me that we were supposed to be studying in partners for our upcoming test, and I managed a remarkably slow reply in the form of "Yeah? Oh, just- "
"Distracted?" she finished for me, like she knew what I was going to say. "You've been that way for most of the week now. The test is on Friday,Pat," she said irritably. I got the feeling that I wasn't her first choice of study partner.
"I know," I responded, a weary sort of sigh escaping me. "Just trying to figure what the new guy's found in the trees is all." It wasn't a lie. Sylvus was as occupied with the courtyard on the other side of the window as I am with good books. My reluctant study partner made a quiet sound, and it was more than obvious that she didn't entirely buy my excuse, but she didn't push and I was grateful for it. We didn't really know each other, but Amanda seemed like a nice enough girl. Certainly she was sensitive to others' feelings; most people would have told Sylvus to beat it weeks ago.
It was an honest surprise when she asked, "You're not so sure about him?" I didn't feel like giving mono-syllable replies today, so a shake of my head stood in to answer. "Neither am I," she followed up, and that prompted me to turn and face her fully. She continued as I was shifting, voice lowered. "But he doesn't rub me the wrong way nearly as much as our English sub. She's always eying me, like she's trying to catch me doing something wrong."
I nodded at that, giving an affirmative grunt. Ms. O'Hara, the district's substitute teacher for the time being, was a fairly unpleasant woman of middling age. She always seemed to be wearing the same coat with obscenely ugly decorative feathers on the arms; one of the feathers had fallen out in class last week, and when I mentioned it she'd looked at me like she wanted to tear my head off. I made it a point not to do anything incriminating around her.
"She's been keeping an eye on Silly, too, hasn't she?" I said, brow furrowing a bit. I'd never been a favorite of substitute teachers—what can I say? If you hate kids, you're in the wrong career—but Sylvus was practically a saint; I don't think he'd missed a single assignment all year, and he never spoke up at all in her class unless he was asked a direct question. For some reason, however, whenever the poor guy so much as twitched in the wrong direction he earned a death glare that I swear made the room drop five degrees.
"Oh, don't call him that." Amanda sighed and glanced out the window to where Sylvus was munching on an apple, tapping his foot absently against the pavement. "He's really not that weird, it's just that people make fun of the way he walks..."
She trailed off as one of the office TAs came into the classroom and handed the teacher a slip of paper. Mrs. Ryerson—and the only reason I remembered her name was because it was sitting on her desk-blinked and frowned at it, adjusting her glasses, then looked up and peered around the room until her gaze lighted on us. "Amanda," she said, holding out the office pass, "Ms. O'Hara would like to see you as soon as possible."
Amanda flipped her textbook shut reluctantly and gave me a look that could have meant either "Speak of the devil" or "Help!" before shoving it into her backpack, collecting the hall pass and stalking out. I felt a small wave of pity for the poor girl; being called out of class for Ms. O'Hara to lecture you was probably somewhere between disembowelment and the Chinese Water Torture on the lists of fates to be avoided at all costs. With a small groan, I forced myself to focus, pulling my criminally thick textbook closer to double-check the next question on our study sheet.
Follow her.
I paused, wondering where the urge had come from. I wasn't exactly a model student, but I was also not in the habit of cutting class to stalk my classmates.
Follow her!
I shook my head and frowned at the study sheet. I'd daydreamed through most of the chapter on Reconstruction, and now was not the time to be skipping review sessions. The Tenure of Office Act required the Senate's approval for-
Follow. Her.
You know, I thought, I think maybe I should follow her.
I stood casually and glanced at our History teacher, who was holding her novel roughly two inches from her nose, squinting as she tried to read the pages.
I'm not the most light-footed of guys, not by a long shot, but by the various gods that woman was engrossed in her book! I strolled casually up to the pencil sharpener next to the whiteboard, glanced back at her to ensure she wasn't watching me, and slipped into the hall.
I made my way down the hall, wishing I'd thought to grab a hall pass before leaving History. Having just gotten out of Ms. O'Hara's English class last period, I wasn't thrilled to be going back, but something pushed me to hurry nonetheless. I wasn't really sure, as I walked down the English hallway, what I expected to dowhen I got there—barge in and start yelling at the sub for giving Amanda a bad grade or something?—but I ended up flat against the wall outside O'Hara's room anyway. I could hear them arguing about something, but the conversation was muted by the door. The obvious enjoyment in O'Hara's voice and the obvious fear in Amanda's made me angry on principle; she hadn't done anything to deserve being bullied by a sadistic sub.
I jumped when I realized I wasn't alone.
Sylvus was pressed up against the wall on the other side of the doorway, looking pale. I had no clue how someone with a muscle condition like his had managed to sneak up so silently, but there he was.
"Man," I muttered as the argument grew louder. "O'Hara's chewing her out."
Sylvus rolled his shoulders nervously, and I noticed with a jolt of surprise that his leg braces were gone. "Yeah," he muttered. "Look, Pat, maybe you should get out of here."
"What?"
"I think I know what this is about, I'll settle it. You should get back to class before-"
He was cut off by a muffled commotion from inside the room. "God!" I exclaimed, shooting Sylvus an incredulous look. "Are they fightingin-"
"Stay back!" Sylvus barked with an authority I'd never heard from him before. Cursing under his breath in some kind of foreign language, he yanked the door open and leaped into the room. Not in the habit of taking orders from weird seniors who may or may not have leg problems, I followed.
And promptly froze in shock.
Ms. O'Hara, the fifty-some year old English substitute, was holding Amanda about six inches off the floor, sleeve-obscured hand gripping her throat. The feathers on her jacket were ruffled up, as if she fluffed them between periods, and I could've sworn her jacket was tightening against her body. Amanda was clawing at the hand clamped around her throat, eyes wide with terror.
My eyes surrendered to that inadvertent blink of disbelief, and then I saw it. The teacher's wrinkled hands were nowhere to be found, instead replaced by much more threatening-looking, talon-like hands with nails more akin to claws. The jacket was gone now, leaving the feathers bound to her arm by- no, they werepart of her arm.
It must have taken a large part of my awareness to register that fact, because the next moment I became suddenly aware of the fact that I was sprawled out on my back, my rear end hurt, and there was a body on top of me. Amanda scrambled up faster than I would have thought possible, and I could see all sorts of fear on her face in the second-long glance I stole. I followed her example, rising to my feet in time to hear a mind-shattering screech as the whatever-the-hell-that-thing-is charged us, and I nearly tripped again as someone yanked me back by the arm. In the moment it took for O'Hara to right herself and abort the failed rush, the rest of us came to an understanding, and a very simple one at that: We needed to get the disgruntled substitute out of this building and away from everyone. Several of those everyones were becoming apparent in the form of hurried footsteps and the telltale sound of walkie-talkie transmissions coming down the hallway just as a series of confused, excited murmurs started sounding from the now-closed classroom door behind me.
We didn't have time to come up with a plan, which is probably what helped me come up with my plan. I've never liked being told what I couldn't do.
Amanda beat me to it, though. The door I had been glancing at suddenly opened and a shaky "Come on!" rang over the slowly increasing volume of footsteps. Sylvus shoved me out the door behind her, wielding a textbook, and I heard a screech of pain before he came bolting after us.
We were halfway down the next hallway when the door slammed open – and I swear I heard metal crunching in on itself. An unholy scream of "Get back here, brats!"assaulted my ears, blanking my mind in sudden fear. I may have reflexively told her to go do something graphic with a barn animal in response.
I have a very healthy appreciation of my own abilities, but in that moment, with some sort of banshee shrieking and racing after me, I ran. It was all I could do to keep pace with Amanda and Sylvus, whose alleged muscle issues had long since been proven false. I was not built for speed by any stretch of the imagination and the fact was becoming painfully apparent in the form of a growing burn in my lungs. I desperately hoped adrenaline was enough to balance the odds, if only enough to allow me a dignified death.
Thankfully enough, the death-defying chemical running through my blood kept me at a full sprint, if only barely. I was faintly aware of a lockdown announcement over the PA system as we burst through a door to the school's courtyard, sunlight forcing my eyes closed. I'd no idea what possessed me to dive to the grass, off to the side, but it saved my life. Another frustrated screech tore from O'Hara's throat, but it took me a few moments to realize, as I scrambled to my feet, that it was coming from above me.
I thought for sure she'd come after me again; God knows I'd made the most cracks at her out of the three of us. But I guess the others had some bad karma. A strafing run from the now airborne bird-woman—what was going onhere?—sent the wide-eyed Sylvus to the ground so hard his shoes came off. For a second it looked like he had a large pair of boots on underneath. I didn't have much time to reason that one out, though, because the soaring substitute was coming around again. I sprinted as quickly as my burning legs and abused lungs would allow, but even at my best I wouldn't have outpaced the airborne creature before she made it to Amanda. The dark-haired girl screamed as O'Hara's form blocked her from sight, and my heart leapt to my throat as the scream cut off abruptly. The flying hag let out a triumphant screech, but that was before my momentum ran us both into the cement.
It was a blur from then, my awareness clouded by a searing rage that bubbled up as the creature's victory call rang in my ears. I felt myself come to a rough stop on O'Hara's now-prone body, snarling as her claws marked my face and arms with wild swipes, drawing lines of stinging red. I had to have reared back for a punch, because the next moment my fist was meeting something that, while solid, gave way with what I perceived as a muted crunch. The frenzied shrieks ringing into my adrenaline-insulated ears turned to choked, frantic sounds as I caught something firm, vaguely fleshy, and cylindrical in my grip. My next noise dwarfed any that she had made, a roar as I clamped down on what must have been her throat, the muscles of her windpipe collapsing as I squeezed. A final, strangled yelp parted O'Hara's hooked beak, and almost a minute later I was beginning to register the fact that I was straddling a pile of dust.
Dark red blood trickled sluggishly between and around the courtyard tiles, and I had a sinking feeling it wasn't Ms. O'Hara's.
My breaths came heavily as soon as I could will myself to take them. Hands pulled at my shoulders, and I nearly surged up again before a dim voice began to grow in volume, each passing second returning more of my senses to me. I registered dimly that there were no longer two people at my side, but only one, arm hooked under mine and smelling faintly of cut grass. After a few moments of stumbling as the sudden exertions of the past ten minutes finally caught up to my adrenaline-fueled body, Sylvus Hawthorne's voice echoed in my ears.
"Amanda's dead," he told me, helping me to steady myself as we made our way toward the other end of the courtyard. "We have to get out of here. I'll explain everything when we're safer."
What just happened?
You were attacked.
What did I just do?
You fought back.
What… happens now?
You keep going.
The thought, and hopefully that's what it was, made sense and it wasn't like I had other options considering the circumstances. Whatever instinct it was that helped me overpower a mythical being was also all that kept me going, I realized, as the sudden urge to sit down and lock up overtook everything but my legs. Sylvus tried a few times to ask me if I was alright, but I couldn't force a syllable past my lips, much less a full-fledged reply. The impulse to give in to shock bled out of me as we walked further, and I couldn't help but notice a faint clip-clopas my new human crutch turned us down a side street, and then another a few moments later. We had been walking for what felt like an hour, which meant it was somewhere between ten and twenty minutes. I found I could open my mouth after awhile, and had the feeling that now was the only time I'd get to figure out just what the hell was going on.
"Stop," I croaked, wincing slightly as the death-like sound of my own ragged voice caught up with me. "Sylvus, what…?" I trailed off as he guided me toward a tree, too scatterbrained to even figure out what, exactly, I wanted to ask him. He must have caught on, though, because a single nod and a tired sigh came back to me in answer.
"It's a lot to explain," he told me after a short silence, reaching down to adjust his pant legs. "I'll start off with the most immediate part; I'm not exactly...human." The shiny boots I'd seen earlier weren't actually boots. They were hooves, plain as day, though they were revealed much less lethally than the last beast-like set of limbs I'd seen on someone. It was odd; I should have been taken aback, but it was almost like I'd seen this kind of thing before, manytimes before, and I knew it wasn't something I should fear.
A thought jumped to my mind upon seeing the source of the faint clip-clopsounds from earlier, voiced in a word before I even realized I'd spoken. "Satyr." Sylvus nodded, and continued on to tell me a few particularly interesting things.
First and foremost, Greek mythology wasn't mythology at all. Given the presence of two mythical creatures in one day, one of which had tried to kill me and the other of which had tried to save my life, I didn't feel qualified to argue that point.
Secondly, Amanda was attacked and killed because she – he said 'you two,' but I dismissed it as a stress-induced slip of the tongue – had been a half-blood, someone with one of the aforementioned Greek gods for a parent. She still was, I suppose, a half-blood…hell of a lot of good it did her now.
"Camp Half-Blood is in New York," Sylvus told me, answering one of my earlier questions. "I was supposed to get Amanda there after she found out who she was. I was so worried about her I didn't even realizethere were two!" he muttered, shaking his head disgustedly. "Idiot! No wonder there was a Kindly One involved, you were completely unguarded!"
Deciding not to get into the fact that I had been in the fight on pure chance, I brought the conversation back to the (strangely more understandable) topic of a mythical training camp for demigods. "New York is across Lake Michigan and up a ways, how did you plan to get there on foot?" I asked. The Satyr-Senior flashed me a grin, bringing something up to his lips. A quick tune later and I was being covered by leaves as the tree branches above me decided they didn't want to stayabove me.
I couldn't tell you exactly how long we'd been in the tree before the branches lifted, but there was one hell of a change in scenery in that time. Either it snowed a few inches in about a minute, or we were very much out of Wisconsin. Come to think of it, both options were plausible. Sylvus had probably heard the startled – and decidedly profane – exclamation about to leave my lips from other people in the past, because I heard him speak up in a cheery tour guide's voice. "Welcome to Connecticut, home of snow and ice and nothing else of importance in regards to our trip!" he said brightly, with the air of having done the same many times before. "Thank you for keeping your limbs inside the tree while grove-walking, and please exit the branches in an orderly fashion!"
"We're right next to New York," I grunted, "If you wanted to give me a heart attack, why not at least bring us right to Camp?" We were, in fact, only a few inches away from the border on a map. I had the sneaking suspicion that those few inches translated to a many-mile-long hike for us, which wasn't exactly a thought I relished.
The answer I received, while not what I wanted to hear, was surprisingly mundane and reasonable. "Transporting two people by grove-walking is harder than it looks, so I had to just take a general shot. I got pretty close, if I do say so myself. Besides," he added. "It's better than swimming through Lake Michigan."
I couldn't help but grin. Out here, it was easier to forget about exactly what had happened. The terror and horror seemed surreal, belonging somewhere else, and we could pretend to ourselves that everything was fine. We set on like that for awhile, telling the occasional joke or making mandatory comments about the "nice weather" as we cut through alleyways and open yards, when Sylvus spoke up.
"Which one of your parents is gone?" he asked, as if that was the social norm. It took me a moment, in which I nearly became acquainted with the ground after stepping on a snow-hidden ice patch, to answer.
"Both are accounted for," I answered, negotiating another frozen section of the sidewalk before continuing. "My old man and his wife, but don't get me started on-"
"Your real mom disappeared, then?" he asked, not giving me a chance to finish as he continued. "When you were too young to remember, right?" I suppose I couldn't be mad at the guy; it sounded like he heard the parent-less story from everyone he dealt with. Despite my understanding, however, I still had to bite my tongue for a moment while working out a less profane answer.
"No," I said. "She's in Milwaukee. Both parents are alive and well, Hawthorne, why shouldn't they be?"
Sylvus looked at me, and I tried not to bristle at the pity in his eyes. "And…you're sure that they're both your real-"
"Yeah. I am."
He let the subject drop, but I could tell he didn't believe me.
I was damned lucky I had worn my hoodie today, I realized as I shivered again. I wasn't exactly toasty, but with long sleeves and pockets I could at least fake only being mildly uncomfortable. It occurred to me, as we trudged over a show-covered field (probably a public park or the like), that my phone still had a charge. Rather, the vibrating buzz of a text message alerted me to that fact, and I fumbled my phone out of its pocket with stiff fingers. Who the hell...oh. Melissa, my wonderfulex-girlfriend, had sent me a frantic text asking where I was, and why the teachers were talking about a dead body. Thanks for the concern, dear, but why don't you let me deal with the fact that I just watched someone get murdered? I made a dissatisfied noise, just managing to shove my cell back into my pocket before a sharp cry froze me faster than the four hours of relentless winter weather. The cry was vaguely avian and painful from even what sounded like a great distance, and I heard Sylvus utter a few words that were less than nice.
Before I could voice the "What the hell?" on the tip of my tongue, another, harsher sound reached my ears; barking. Dogs, if you could call them that, heavier than me and almost as tall, eyes glowing visibly red even from this distance, charged at us through the thickly piled snow. That obstacle was probably all that saved Sylvus and me as we fled in the opposite direction. A glance over locked our gazes for a brief, terror-conquered moment, and I knew he was thinking the same thing as me.
Even with the distance already between us and the hunting dogs from hell, they were bound to overtake us, and it wouldn't be pretty when they did.
Sylvus ducked around a tree and I nearly spilled into the snowy grass following him, panting so heavily I nearly forgot how cold I had gotten. "I guess my luck was bound to run out eventually," he muttered, a far off look in his eye. "I was getting closer and closer every time. And now…"
I wanted to answer, to reassure him that we would survive this just like the last round of ding-dong-ditch with Death. But any words were swept away by the rush of terror in my system, and the realization—just barely dawning, a delayed reaction because of the shock—that we hadn'tall survived. Was this it, then? Just like Amanda not five hours ago, did it end for us both as a meal for some mythical beast?
I caught him shaking his head out of the corner of my eyes, shifting his arm to do something or another. "Patrick," he said distantly, as I started to face him, "Go to Camp Half-Blood, with the strongest blessing I can give you."
I was opening my mouth to ask what brought that on when a sturdy hoof flashed and a sudden impact, just below my diaphragm, knocked the breath from my lungs. I lost my balance and tumbled back against the tree, scrambling to get up just before another double blow landed in about the same spot, bringing a whole new meaning to the word starstruckas my vision exploded into white. A hurried tune sounded in my ears, fuzzy from the shock of being hit so suddenly, and then I was covered by leaves.
I sucked in a ragged breath, batting the branches away from me as soon as I could bring my arms up. It wasn't like before, when the trees' grip had been more of a caress; I couldn't breathe, and I felt like I was being squeezed, pulled; a flash of painfully bright light accompanied by a searing pain in my head blinded me and I fought the gripping branches with everything I had. But by then, they were already moving up by themselves. A few shocked exclamations came from around me, almost as if the trees themselves were surprised at my sudden appearance. It dawned on me that there were far more of those trees than just a moment ago, and my mind kicked into overdrive as something else occurred to me.
I wasn't lying on snow anymore.